The federal Voting Rights Act prevents states with overtly racist histories from manipulating their electoral processes to discourage or flat-out prevent voting by minorities.

It does so by forcing those states to submit proposed changes in their voting laws for review by the U.S. Justice Department or a federal court, a practice that conservatives have sought to scuttle since Reagan administration.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his own inimitable way, described repeated Congressional efforts to protect the minority right to vote as "perpetuation of racial entitlement.

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Now there's a zinger worthy of Limbaugh, dropped from the bench of the nation's highest court. We think it's safe to say the government's defense of this key civil rights law is off to a decidedly poor start with this particular Supreme Court.

Bear in mind, Congress has repeatedly renewed the act in the decades since, most recently in 2006 for another 25 years. Scalia says that's because lawmakers are too afraid of losing their seats should they repeal it, so we suppose he thinks it's up to him to do the job for them.

The argument against Section 5 holds that these states are no longer racist, or maybe somewhat less racist, so they should no longer be subjected to federal hassles and the stigma of their own history.

An argument for preserving Section 5 can be found in swing states run by Republicans that tend to vote Democratic in big elections, including Pennsylvania. Many of them, including Pennsylvania, passed laws prior to the 2012 presidential election requiring government-issued IDs to vote.

Voter ID laws, of course, do not necessarily derive from racial animus. But, in effect, they disproportionately target and hassle minorities and others - particularly those who are elderly, poor, or live in cities - who do not need or no longer hold driver's licenses.

The point here is that even northern states with no particular history of racial voter suppression are nonetheless engaging in voter suppression, even if it's just a non-racist means to an end that favors a political party.

The U.S. Supreme Court cannot be unaware of these state-based efforts. Its tacit encouragement will make it harder to protect eligible Americans' right to vote, whether the cause is racism or color-blind partisan advantage.

- Matthew Major, opinion editor, can be reached at mmajor@publicopinionnews.com, or find him on Twitter @MattMajorPO.